Machine Guns Vegas: Now THAT’S a Sure-Fire Innovation!

Las Vegas is an ideal place to look for new over-the-top super-excess ways to amuse people with money to waste. Hotels recreate the Eiffel Tower, the Pyramids, almost anything, at huge expense.

But now comes the latest sure-fire Vegas innovation: MGV. Machine Guns Vegas. It’s an indoor upscale shooting range with two key features: skimpily-dressed gun-toting hostesses, and a wide range of vintage weapons, including Uzi’s and Thompson machine guns. * If you’re tired of baccarat, why not drop in and fire off a few thousand rounds? Pretend the target is someone you really dislike.

The Thompson machine gun was invented in 1919 by John Thompson, and became infamous during the Prohibition era in the U.S., when it was used by law enforcers and criminals alike. It got the affectionate nickname, Tommy Gun. The Uzi is a submachine gun designed by Major Uziel Gal in the 1940’s and is still wildly popular among submachine gun aficionados.

The pricing model? For $699, the top of the line package, a client gets to fire an array of 16 weapons, 1,550 rounds of ammunition and a pass to the VIP lounge. For the Full auto package, you get 10 machine guns, for $399.

“We did the fully automatic,” says 61-year-old Wilbur Willis, a printer from Tennessee. “It was awesome: some older guns, some newer guns.”

This business innovation has huge possibilities. It could quickly be franchised, to Kabul, Afghanistan, and Ramadi, Iraq. In fact, Syrian President Assad has already optioned MGV, with a wrinkle: He uses real live women and children for his targets.

There is one place in the world where MGV will never fly. Israel. Here, where young men and women learn to fire weapons as part of their compulsory military service, somehow submachine guns lose their allure when you have to sleep with them, and smell the gun oil, for three years or more.

* “In Las Vegas a nice place to fire an Uzi and relax with a cappuchino”. Global NYT March 7 2012.